Greetings!
I've been tring to post to the TML for a while and now that finals are
over, I finally have time for Traveller. :)
bio Stuff:
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First, a comment about the recent Bio thread... I'm very interested in
seeing a new "creature creation" system for Traveller, one that is
more realistic that what's in the book even if it requires more thought
to build a creature. What I would like to see is a system that lets
a referee build a complete ecology using a planet's UPP.
You use the UPP to find out the planet's athmo/hydrosphere ratings,
the mineral levels, etc etc, then the basic "weather types" (high-
altitude storms, great tides, warm air currents, etc).
From then on you can determine the ecosystem's "base", that is, a couple
of the more important bacteria/viruses/microbes and build up the
ecosystem from then on trying to fill every niches in the food chain.
The niches would be determined by the current types of creatures,
the place of each creature in the food chain decided according to it's
size, metabolism and capacities, for example:
plankton <-- water mammal <- land fisher <- giant trap plants <- decay back
\ \- sea birds <- parasitic worms <-/ into sea.
\- crustacean <- squid <- ??? (empty niche to be filled)
\- ??? (empty niche)
Also, the niches and types of creatures would be limited by the
environment, for example the planet's land surface might be unhabitable
for flying creatures (what if the planet is in a constant meteor shower?)
or ape-likes creatures would be unlikely in a tree-less environment.
This sounds like a lot of work but I think it would be worth it. :)
After all, a lot of SF books are only about an ecosystem and we would
be sure to get an integrated ecosystem.
The hard part would be to be able to create non-earth-like ecologies
but if we use a "building blocks" system like this, it could make
some sense in the end. :)
Just my, 39 lines' worth of comments. :) I'm not a biologist and
I only know what I've been taught in high school but this is the
kind of system I would like to see (or help create :).
Metempsychosys:
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I thought of making this a psi power, it's pretty powerful so take it or
leave it. :)
"When a living thing dies, its 'soul' or psyche takes up a new residence
in some other body, which it thereby vivifies; for the psyche, bodily
death means emigration, bodily birth immigration. That is the ancient
doctrine of 'metempsychosis' or the transmigration of the soul."
"...To some Greeks, at least, it appeared to be an empirical theory;
and its empirical basis lay in memory"
-- The Oxford Companion to The Mind
How should metempsychosys work in MegaTraveller? Well, the character
isn't really re-born (it would involve too many religions and it's a touchy
subject:). What happens is that a character tries to transfer all his
tought-patterns to something that might accept them.
This something is usually an already sentient being, but it can be an animal
or even a sufficiently advanced computer system. The creature being
transferred to is still using his or her own brain and that the being
transferring there cannot wipe out all the thought-patterns already present
and start from scratch because it would immediately kill the host.
The target's regulatory systems (breathing, etc) would receive a shock and
the target would die or fall into a coma.
If the attempt works, the result is a mesh of the two different
personalities living in the target's body. Mental skills and psionic skills
can be transferred to the new body. The resulting being might feel as if
having two distinct personalities but usually the differing traits smooth
out over time. Only the major traits of both personalities finally emerges,
but in general, the beings harsh and cunning enough to perform a
metempsychosys usually have a strong personality and in general
end up with almost their original selves and thought-processes in the end.
Metempsychosys should be a very uncommon psionic skill, because it is almost
impossible to train in it. Those who have it are naturally strong in it.
To obtain this skill while at a Psionic Institute, you have to roll an
11+ using the normal procedure (this means you have to try for this skill
first).
When a character wishes to use this skill, he has to concentrate
for one full round without doing anything else. Then he must spend one psi
point for each point of intellect, education or skill level (only mental
& psi skills, like admin) that he wants to transfer to the new body.
A simple psi-shield is all that's needed to prevent invasion. The victim
gets the same type of protection as from a normal psi assault.
Unshielded victims or those without psi-points are immediately affected,
while a person aware of being invaded can spend psi-points to suppress the
points spent by the one transferring, on a one-on-one basis. There are no
other know defenses. This would be a very interesting skill to use in an
attack if it didn't leave the user without psi points and possible brain
damage.
Example: Max Crab is bleeding to death, collapsed on a balcony overlooking
a vast Vilani city. Victim of a witch hunt, he understands the hopelessness
of his situation when he hears the mob coming closer. A member of the
lynch mob, Talgan, hopes to calm down the usually peaceful vilani by
doing things in the normal, commonly accepted way and steps boldly before
the prone body, trying to reason with them.
Crab knows there's only one thing he can do and he concentrates on the
preaching vland. He uses his last psi strength to send his whole
consciouseness into the vland's and try to dislodge it. Crab has 11
points left, with which he hopes to transfer 4 points of Int,2 of Edu (he
wants to "remember" some secret plans he's heard of... A character's
personal memories will be proportional to the number of edu points
transferred), 2 levels of Pilot and 3 of Computer. The vland has 6
psi-strength points. He pushes back the attack, reducing Crab's total
points to only 5. Crab doesn't have a choice, and must transfer what he can
for 5 points worth. He chooses 2 point of education, 2 of Int and 1 of
Computer, hoping that he won't end up in a totally impotent bureaucrat.
The results? We know that the vland was a low bureaucrat, relatively
unintelligent and uneducated with int of 5. Crab transferred two points.
The vland's TOTAL intelligence is now 7, but a lot of his thinking will be
like Crab's fashion because roughly 29% (2/7) of his thought-processes comes
from Crab. With 7 of Edu to start with, he ends up at 9, so 22% of what he
knows comes from Crab. Thus, he may not BE Crab but he certainly does
behave like him about a third of the time.
Since no character's abilities can go beyond F, the points
over F must be deducted from the victim's side. For example, a victim has
C Int. He or she gets transferred 7 Int points. The total exceeds F by 3
points, so we cut off 3 from C's starting intelligence to end up with F Int.
The total int count goes like this: 9 from victim and 7 from transferer.
The intellect is thus 57% that of victim and 43% that of transfered. These
percentages are good guidelines to build up the resulting personality.
We've mentionned that even some computers would be able to hold
personalities. Actually, anything that can hold a living, moving pattern
of forces (in brains, electricity) can be a recipient for a being. Lo-tech
computers cannot do this. Parrallel computers can, but of course, the
capacities of the new being will be severely limited. With 8 as an average
psi-strenght (it's actually lower than that), that makes for about 4 Int, 2
Edu and 2 Psi (to be able to affect the outside world). Not much of a
person, and besides, imagine the shock of finding yourself being a pile
of optic cables and memories? An almost bodyless machine? It might
explain some of those haunted Zhodani ships stories... :)
This psionic skill might seem out of place in MegaTraveller but this
skill can add a lot of interesting role-playing twists and turns to a game.
Some cults might be built around this psionic power, or someone might
pretend to be the reincarnated Strephon (and promptly get lynched :).
Hope you like it, I hope nobody had done it before and that I get some
comments. :)
// Pierre-Louis Constantin, [email removed]
\\// "Variables won't, constants aren't." -- Osborn